Nicholls projects forge ahead despite cuts

Monday

Aug 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM

With the fall semester approaching, local colleges and universities are hurrying to finish several major construction projects.

Matthew AlbrightStaff Writer

And while school officials, students and fans say they’re proud of the work, they’re also lamenting the disparity between a construction boom and declining support for academics.The biggest local project, the nearly 100,000-square-foot new Fletcher Technical Community College campus in Schriever, is all but finished.Fletcher officials unveiled the $21 million campus, which will roughly double the school’s size, at a July 31 ceremony that drew dignitaries from all over the state, including Gov. Bobby Jindal. It’s now the largest single building in the state’s community-college system.Students will attend classes there when classes start Aug. 22. Construction is finished, and the college is putting the finishing touches on computer equipment, library materials and other furnishings. Nicholls State University is also forging ahead with several construction projects on its Thibodaux campus. The largest is a 63,000-square-foot, $16 million recreation center that’s been in the works for years.Once finished, the center will include a second-floor walking track, basketball courts, a 5,000-square-foot weight room and a 35-piece cardio room with treadmills and exercise bikes equipped with TV screens and docks for music players, among other amenities. Mike Davis, Nicholls’ assistant vice president for facilities, said workers are laboring overtime to finish the building, but it won’t immediately be open when school starts. “The construction is progressing rapidly, but we’re not going to make that Aug. 18th date we were hoping for,” Davis said. “It’s probably going to open sometime after Labor Day.”Davis said the Rec Center is one of the biggest projects the school has seen in years.“We’re going to be the last school to get a building like this. Every time a center opens on a campus, it becomes hugely popular,” he said. “In a lot of cases, it becomes an even more popular gathering place than the student union.”Nicholls has several other projects on the horizon. After more than seven years of fundraising, the school has finally assembled the more than $12 million necessary to start construction of a new culinary school. Davis said he hopes to break ground on the new building in the first few months of 2013.Campus administrators said the culinary school, one of Nicholls’ flagship programs, badly needs the facility.They say enrollment at the school has grown from about 50 students in 1997 to about 300 today, yet the school’s limited space in Gouaux Hall hasn’t expanded. “We haven’t even been able to recruit for that program because we’re already busting at the seams,” Davis said. The new building will provide space for 500 students. It will include state-of-the art kitchens and storage space, as well as a dedicated restaurant for students to operate during their “bistro” practical application class. In addition to those two major projects, the school is refurbishing the football stadium, finishing a new soccer complex and installing new lights in Rienzi Circle at the front of campus.The construction boom, among the largest in either school’s history, comes at the same time that repeated cuts in state money are causing cutbacks in the school’s academic units. This year, administrators are making their 10th budget cut since 2008, slashing $5.3 million. To make that cut, administrators have laid off 28 employees, mostly staff members, and further slashed department budgets. Those cuts have also forced the school to raise tuition and fees, leading many Nicholls students and alumni to cry foul.“What would be the use of a rec center if there is no one who can afford to go to school there?” wrote Arlene Guidry on Facebook.“One would think that if they’re having hard times cutting programs and having to lay people off because they don’t have the money to pay these people and keep these programs intact that they would hold off on these buildings,” wrote Ronnie Campo. “I would think that health care programs would be more important than cooking classes.”Nicholls President Stephen Hulbert said he understands that frustration. “I understand how a taxpayer, after reading or hearing about the catastrophic state cuts to higher education, might look at our new recreation center and perceive a contradiction in priorities,” Hulbertsaid. “The reality is that we are not permitted to take one dollar from such projects to balance our operating budget.”Hulbert said the money paying for the new construction was virtually all raised specifically for those projects without the kind of state dollars that pay for teachers and academic programs. In many cases, that money was raised years before the university hit hard fiscal times.The rec center, for example, is paid for entirely by a fee students voted to approve years ago. Costs of operating the center will be paid using a new recreation operations fee that takes effect this fall. Since students voted specifically to use those fees for the rec center, the school can’t legally use them to shore up its education budgets.The culinary school building is paid for using a specifically dedicated $8.1 million in capital outlay money and more than $4.5 million from local donors. The elevator project was paid for using state emergency money to fix serious safety issues, and the soccer building was paid for using mostly donations. While school officials acknowledge the dissonance, they say there’s simply nothing they can do. They also argue that as Nicholls increasingly shifts away from a school paid for by state tax money to a school paid for primarily by students, building a university with amenities and extras that appeal to students is increasingly important. “Ultimately, to save higher education in Louisiana, we will require not only a statewide understanding of the facts but also a true partnership with our leaders in Baton Rouge, which we currently do not have,” Hulbert said. “Until then we will continue to do everything we can to recruit and retain as many students as possible.”

Staff Writer Matthew Albright can be reached at 448-7635 or at matthew.albright@dailycomet.com.